Albert C. Smith (1906-1999) was born on April 5, 1906, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1926, and his PhD in 1933. In 1928, he became a staff member at the New York Botanical Garden. He made his first tropical trips to Colombia, Peru, and Brazil from 1926 to 1929. His botanical studies at the New York Botanical Garden were divided between South American and Pacific plants. Smith left New York to be the curator of Arnold Arboretum Herbarium at Harvard, working there until 1948 when he returned to Washington and the Smithsonian Institution. At the Smithsonian he served as curator in the Department of Botany, then as the director of the National Museum of Natural History (1958-1962). He was briefly was the assistant secretary (1962-1963), and then a program director at the National Science Foundation. He left Washington and went to Hawaii, where he became director of research and professor of botany at the University of Hawaii until 1970. He moved to the University of Massachusetts until 1976, returning to Hawaii to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden as editorial consultant. He died in Honolulu in 1999.